African ministers call for investment in Great Green Wall to aid Covid-19 recovery

(Climate Home News, 7 Sep 2020) An initiative to create a green corridor across Africa is key to the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, ministers have said.

Ministers from 11 African countries in the Sahel region met virtually on Monday to take stock of progress in implementing the Great Green Wall, an ambitious vision to create a 15 kilometre wide and 8,000 kilometre long strip of vegetation across Africa.

In recent decades, severe droughts and overgrazing have turned the edge of the semi-arid Sahel – one of the poorest regions in the world – into a desert. Launched in 2007, the Great Green Wall aims to reverse the trend.

But the initiative’s first comprehensive status report found the pace of land restoration needs to more than quadruple over the next decade to meet its goal of restoring 100 million hectares of land and creating 10 million green jobs.

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Climate Home News, 7 Sep 2020: African ministers call for investment in Great Green Wall to aid Covid-19 recovery